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The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the changes in child protection policy and practice in England over the last 30 years, in particular to critically analyse the nature and impact of the “refocusing” initiative of the mid-1990s.

Policy analysis.

While the period from the mid-1990s until 2008 can be seen to show how policy and practice attempted to build on a number of the central principles of the “refocusing” initiative, the period since 2008 has been very different. Following the huge social reaction to the death of Peter Connelly, policy and practice moved in directions quite contra to the “refocusing” initiative’s aims and aspirations such that we can identify a refocusing of “refocusing”. Such developments were given a major impetus with the election of the Coalition government in 2010 and have been reinforced further following the election of the Conservative government in May 2015.

The paper places the changes in child protection policy and practice in England in their political and economic contexts and makes explicit how the changes impact on the role and responsibilities of professionals, particularly social workers.

In this paper, the authors aim to build a prescriptive framework to help managers in turning around their ailing organizations. Their framework focuses on the extent of contractionary and expansionary initiatives needed to rebuild long‐term competitive advantage. They make the case that managers engaging in a pro‐active and balanced approach to scaling down and growing their organizations can boost the success of their recovery efforts.

The authors build their framework based on academic research on corporate turnarounds, their scholarly work on corporate restructuring, and their combined experiences and observations in industry. Their framework proposes four possible outcomes of the turnaround process: comeback, adrift, running‐on‐empty, and collapse. They provide examples to describe each outcome.

The authors' framework suggests that the interaction between two restructuring actions – retrenchment and repositioning ‐ determines the outcome of corporate turnarounds. By overemphasizing downsizing, managers fail to jumpstart entrepreneurial growth that can propel the firm towards long‐term competitive advantage. Similarly, stresses arising from excessive growth programs can quickly drain firm resources. As such, all managers need to assess the alignment between downsizing efforts and growth‐oriented initiatives. By bringing awareness to the interdependency between retrenchment and repositioning, the authors' framework can guide managers in making necessary adjustments on the way to fixing their organization.

Retrenchment and repositioning represent the means available to managers attempting corporate turnaround. However, corporate turnarounds often fail due to an overemphasis on one phase of the restructuring process, at the expense of the other. This framework points to the delicate retrenchment‐repositioning required to achieve successful turnaround.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the strength of organisational strategy, technology intensity and entrepreneurial orientation as predictors of managerial global mindset intensity in the Indian and Chinese service industry.

A pluralist research design that captured quantitative and qualitative data from 239 Indian and 210 Chinese indigenous managers was evaluated to test the hypothesised relationships of a conceptual model that was developed from the contemporary relevant literature.

The results of the investigation demonstrate that technological intensity and entrepreneurial orientation were significant determinants of managerial global mindset intensity. Qualitative information that revealed technological intensity and entrepreneurial orientation were dominant drivers from developing and nurturing managerial global mindset intensity.

In spite of both study countries having large populations, the evaluated sample sizes were of reasonable magnitude. The evidence of indicators that strongly reform the domain of global managerial mindsets has considerable application for corporations operating in the international marketplace.

The rising dominance of the service sector as well as the changing economic, political and social landscape are compelling organisations to more fully understand the dynamics of the dramatic shifts in managerial thinking.

Outlines the progress that East Midlands Electricity has made in implementing total quality management in the midst of privatisation. Includes a discussion of problems encountered. Argues that TQM progress has been continually reviewed and the results have been used to refocus the quality initiatives.

Few service organizations in the US and Europe have not by now attempted to implement at least some of the principles of TQM in their operations. Indeed some service organizations have made repeated attempts to re‐invigorate their quality management programmes and have experienced waves of waxing and waning enthusiasm about TQM. How should service managers determine whether TQM is realized within their organizations? Is their implementation partial or comprehensive? Should it be refocused on improvement areas hitherto neglected? Presents a model of TQM which is translated into an auditing tool to enable service managers to determine the maturity of TQM implementation in their organizations and refocus their improvement initiatives.

This paper aims to be a reflection on the marketing/entrepreneurship interface paradigm after ten years.

The paper reviews original comments made in the inaugural issue Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship and uses relevant parts of this to serve as a foundation for contemporary reflections.

The paper finds that perhaps there is a need to refocus research initiatives towards small business (SB) marketing/entrepreneurship.

Given the dearth of knowledge within the small business sector of WEB and WEB 2.0 as potential business tools, there are potentially huge practical implications stemming from meaningful research outcomes.

Comments are original thought based on many years' research and practice in the SB marketing/entrepreneurship interface.

Describes an initiative to refocus the appraisal, review and career planning within the Shoe and Allied Trades Research Association (SATRA). First of a two‐part article; the second part describes the implementation of the scheme and the monitoring of its effectiveness.

This article describes the contrast between the clearly expressed and optimistic intentions of section 17 of the Children Act 1989, namely to produce a genuine service continuum that will promote and safeguard the welfare of children, and the reality of the post‐1989 implementation process. It shows how, over decades, perennial challenges have consistently skewed the balance between proactive family support services and reactive crisis‐driven responses in favour of the latter. Drawing on government‐commissioned evaluations, including two on out‐of‐home care and family centres respectively, the authors conclude that the Act has failed to change this balance for the better. Primary factors in this include inadequate funding and the risk‐averse responses of policy‐makers and politicians.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the meso-level social forces that influence moderate drinking in young women’s friendship groups through the application of social capital theory.

A qualitative inquiry was undertaken utilising peer-paired and small focus groups to explore young women’s drinking choices within their existing friendship groups. Guided by emic and etic perspectives, friendship groups were analysed to inform archetypical representations that illustrate group-level social capital exchanges.

The approach led to identifying four social capital and drinking archetypes. These archetypes indicate social capital-led “influencers” and “followers” and highlight the displays of capital practised by young women in alcohol consumption contexts.

The social marketing insight drawn from this study of young women’s drinking behaviours will inform social marketers on future strategic directions about how they can use alternative methods to segment the social market of young female drinkers and develop value propositions that will motivate them towards adopting or maintaining moderate drinking practices.

This study contributes to social marketing theory by demonstrating the worth of social capital theory as an alternative lens for social marketers to apply in explorations of group influences that shape behaviour. The research findings in the paper demonstrate how deeper theorisation provides rich insight into the meso-level, complex behavioural influence which effect young women’s alcohol consumption.

There are often calls for more focus on outcomes in Children’s Social Care yet there is little consensus on what these outcomes should be. Key challenges include who should decide what outcomes should be measured and the sheer range of issues that social workers deal with. The purpose of this paper is to provide a reflective account of approaches to measuring outcomes that the author has used in recent studies in order to illustrate the complexity involved in understanding what the purpose of Children’s Social Care is and therefore how outcomes might be measured.

A review of and reflection on lessons from recent research studies carried out by the author and colleagues.

The results are used to illustrate and support an argument that Children’s Social Care performs multiple functions and that this has implications for thinking about outcomes. Helping children and parents is one element of the work, but assessing risk across large numbers of referrals and identifying those that require involvement is equally important. Furthermore, the social work role requires complex considerations around liberty and the rights of parents and children. One consequence of this is that the quality of the service provided is important in its own right.

It is suggested that the evaluation of Children’s Social Care involves four types of outcomes: measures of the quality of the service provided; assessment of whether the “right” families are being worked with; client-defined measures of change; and the development of appropriate standardised instruments. Examples of approaches in each area are discussed.

The theoretical considerations suggest that we need to have a multi-dimensional approach to evaluating, inspecting and leading Children’s Social Care services. In particular, the importance of the quality of delivery and appropriate targeting of the service are emphasised, as well as considering various approaches to measuring outcomes.

The paper proposes a combination of qualitative and quantitative measures of process, assessment and outcomes for evaluating outcomes in Children’s Social Care.